


Talk to Me

by aroseintheimpala



Category: Supernatural
Genre: written before season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:32:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroseintheimpala/pseuds/aroseintheimpala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Metatron is cast back down to Earth, and the boys think there is a chance of finding Cas’s grace. Cas and Dean talk about what he’s going to do once he has it back, and Cas decides where he really calls home. Written pre-season 9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talk to Me

“Talk to me.”

Cas sat cross-legged on the couch in the Men of Letters bunker, staring at the hardwood floor like it was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. Dean’s gaze remained steady, patient. He knew better than to push Cas into talking about something while he was still processing. He always teased him that it looked like he needed time to buffer like a video on a bad Internet connection. So he waited patiently in the chair he had dragged in front of Castiel.

“About what?” Cas finally asked.

Dean sighed. So he was going to make this difficult then.

“Well,” Dean said. “For starters, Metatron is roaming the earth again like a pissed off Transformer—“

“Metatron is an angel, Dean. I think you’re referring to Megatron,” Cas supplied.

“I know, it was a joke,” Dean sighed. “Wait, did you just understand a pop-culture reference?”

Cas shrugged. Dean stared at him and laughed in disbelief.

“Anyways,” Dean continued with an amused shake of his head. “Megatron was thrown out of Heaven.” Cas chuckled and Dean grinned. “According to Garth, the surge in omens in the last two days suggests he’s not far from here. That means we have at least a snowball’s chance of getting your grace back.”

The playful atmosphere drained from the room and left a heavy silence in its wake. Castiel picked at the hem of his plaid, blue pajama bottoms nervously. Well, they were technically Dean’s. Even though he had several pairs of his own, he wore them often because he insisted they were his favorite.

“So what’s going on in that head of yours?” Dean asked.

“I have to get it back,” Cas stated.

Dean ran a hand through his hair roughly and suddenly found the hardwood floor just as interesting as Cas had five minutes ago. “Yeah, I know.” 

“If he doesn’t have my grace, the angel trials will be incomplete and Heaven will be unlocked,” Cas explained as if it were new information. 

“Right,” Dean said.

“You don’t look happy,” Cas remarked.

Dean looked up and met Cas’s analytical gaze in a staring match that was typical of their friendship. It was as if Dean was searching for answers in Cas’s eyes and Cas was searching for the questions in Dean’s. It wasn’t so much an unspoken conversation as a sort of really confusing mental dance.

“You want to know if I’m planning to become an angel again,” Cas concluded after some time.

Dean broke the stare and looked at his hands, wringing them anxiously between his knees. Cas sighed and leaned back against the couch. It seemed they had finally gotten to the crux of the issue.

“If you had asked me six months ago, I would have said yes,” Cas said.

“But now?” Dean asked, looking up at Cas again.

“Now, I don’t know,” Cas admitted. “It is so much harder to determine what is right and what is wrong from this human perspective.”

He looked deeply troubled with the crease in his forehead and eyebrows seemingly stuck pointing downward. Dean reached out and took his hand before he could stop himself. Cas looked up at Dean and smiled, a little uncertainly.

Dean said, “Well, whatever you decide, you’re a part of this screwed up family whether you like it or not.”

Cas smiled warmly. “Thank you, Dean.”

Dean looked down at their hands and seemed to realize how intimate their current state was for the first time. He cleared his throat and squeezed Cas’s hand quickly before letting go.

“Uh, what do you say we go help Sammy out in the kitchen?” he asked as he stood up.

Cas nodded and followed Dean through the hall until he could smell the lasagna permeating the air and making his stomach growl. A growling stomach was such a human sensation and one that had almost become normal to him. He stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame as Dean took the spoon Sam pushed his way and began to stir the brownie mix inside the bowl. Dean tried to sneak a taste of the batter and Sam, with his back turned, said, “Stop it.”

He watched the brothers bicker and laugh. This was family, Cas thought. Maybe Naomi was right when she said he was created with a crack in his chassis. If that were true, then God must have known Castiel would never be at home with the heavenly host. It must have been a divine plan that only he could be the one to save the righteous man from perdition and then be saved in return by the only people in the world he would ever call family. Dean taught Cas free will, and now Cas thought he truly understood what that meant. He belonged here with these broken, confused humans because he was one too.

“Are you going to stand there all night or come help me lick the batter off these spoons?” Dean asked.

Cas happily stepped into the kitchen and took a spoon from Dean. He was certain he would never learn all of these small, insignificant human nuances, and he didn’t think he ever wanted to. If given the choice between one short lifetime to figure it all out and an eternity to watch from a distance as he had always done, he decided that this one, brief chance to get it right with Dean and Sam was more than enough. 

Two weeks later, Metatron was defeated and Cas’s grace returned. He and Dean drove down to the cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas and buried the glowing vial of light in the place where free will had begun five years earlier. There was no ceremony; no words were spoken to commemorate the loss. Perhaps because there was none. Cas simply buried it and let it be with a small pat on the ground where it lay. Walking back to the impala with Dean’s rough hand in his own, his mind swirled with all that he was gaining. Heaven lost an angel, but Castiel found a home.


End file.
